


Apparitions

by fiveboysxtheworld



Series: Apparitions [1]
Category: Harry Styles - Fandom, Larry Stylinson - Fandom, Louis Tomlinson - Fandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, M/M, Separations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveboysxtheworld/pseuds/fiveboysxtheworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been decades since the fatal passings of two members of the legendary boyband One Direction.</p><p>As far as anyone's concerned, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson's bodies are rotting away ten feet underneath the soil of their hometowns. Fans regularly come and go to mourn, leaving flowers and heartfelt tears in their wake. It's the same as any other death.</p><p>But miles away, in the Frien Barnet section of London, seven-year-old Carmen is undergoing the process of moving into "The Dome", a golden palace where multiple celebrities have called home, including Harry and Louis themselves.</p><p>Carmen soon discovers that her new home is haunted with two ghostly spirits, each one desperately searching for their beloved one. They've both requested the same thing - for Carmen to help them in their individual journies to locate the one person they weren't allowed to be together with in their previous lives.</p><p>If she succeeds, the two may finally rest in peace with the one they love so dearly.</p><p>But if she doesn't, the ghosts will forever aimlessly walk the halls of her house, haunting anyone who dares to enter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

The glass barrier was dense and thick, its wavy surface disorienting the image it produced on the other side for the older teenager. He brushed the drooping mass of curls off from his forehead in an attempt to clear his vision, but the window remained the same. Impossibly impenetrable and infuriatingly mystifying. It had been that way for some time now – the boy had lost track over how long he had spent desperately trying to get a clearer image. It was as if he needed contacts to properly see through the glass wall, and he couldn’t seem to put them in his eyes quite right. They continuously shifted; sometimes he would get a clear glimpse of the scene laid out before him, and on other occasions, being able to see anything would be as impossible as trying to perceive something in pitch-blackness.

 

He sighed and rested his pale forehead against the cool glass. Trailing his index finger in absentminded patterns on its surface, the curly-haired boy once again attempted to conjure up a scene beyond the barrier. But nothing other than the exasperating cloudy milky-white colour appeared. The boy rotated around so his back was facing the barricade and slumped against the glass in defeat. He had hoped that something beneficial would come out of choosing this particular journey. He had dreamed of happy endings and storybook conclusions, but the situation he was in put him in a position where his wishes weren’t even an option anymore.

 

That is, until a very faint, but still audible tap resounded around the vacant room.

 

The boy leapt up from his hunched over position in a mixture of perplexity and hope and twisted around to face the sound.

 

Tap. Tap. Tap.

 

He glanced around wildly, his green orbs lighting up with newfound optimism. His heart rate increased, and the colour that had drained from his cheeks returned in a faint pink flush. The boy moved around, running his hands over the glass’s surface to try and find the source of the tapping. He called out, his voice raspy and deep, for someone.

 

“Hello?! Is anyone there?”

 

The noise increased its volume, the intensity of the sound ringing in the boy’s ears. He recognized the relentless tapping as coming from the far right corner of the window. The boy raced over towards where the sound was the loudest and impatiently pressed his face against the glass.

 

At first, all he could see was the murky whiteness, but it slowly dissolved into the silhouette of a man’s figure walking.

 

He pounded his fists in a furious rhythm on the glass, “Over here! Hello! I’m here!”

 

The shadowed figure stopped, and the boy could make out its head turning towards him. The boy screamed and shouted for all he was worth, bloodying his hands by pounding against the barrier ferociously in an attempt to draw the figure towards him. The figure turned, and began heading in the direction of the curly-headed boy. Its speed amplified, and it appeared as if it was sprinting towards him. The boy continued his incessant beating of his fists until the figure crouched down and pressed its face to the glass to line up with his.

 

When the shadowy figure’s features came into the boy’s suddenly clear vision, he froze stock-still. It could not be possible. He was dreaming. Hallucinating even. The blue-eyed, brown-fringed boy sitting before him was simply a mirage his overtired mind had created.

 

But yet, as he pinched himself on the arm, he did not wake up panting from an overly lucid dream - and instead remained right where he was – face to face with the boy he would give anything for.

 

“Louis?” he whispered tentatively, still not believing his own eyes.

 

The other boy smiled, the laugh lines crinkling at the corner of his eyes, “Harry?!”

 

The two broke out into hysterical cries of happiness and joy, pushing their hands and pressing their faces harder against the glass barricade.

 

“I can’t believe it’s you!” Harry exclaimed, wonder flickering in his bold green orbs.

 

“I can’t either Haz…I can’t either,” Louis gushed, scraping his eyes over every detail of Harry’s brightened features as if he’d disappear in an instant. “Listen, I don’t have much time – I’m not even supposed to be anywhere near here! If I get caught, I’ll be sent straight down to hell for sure! But there’s something I need to tell you…”

 

Harry nodded in response, his revived curls bouncing wildly around his grinning face. “What is it?!” he whispered in a tone of barely contained excitement, placing his hand on the glass so it lined up with Louis’.

 

“I can…well there’s a way that we could possibly be…” Louis’ voice caught, and he cleared his throat, “We could be…together.”

 

Harry’s throat closed off in an overwhelming rush of emotion. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His eyes had lit up though, and there was an internal light that seemed to radiate off of him like the sun’s rays. “How…?” he finally croaked, tears threatening to overflow from his glistening orbs.

 

Louis smiled at Harry, his facial expression mirroring the curly-haired boy’s perfectly. “I don’t know precisely how it works, but it involves a little girl – that’s all they could tell me. It’s not exactly information I’m supposed to know…” he admitted with a sly grin in Harry’s direction.

 

Harry laughed for the first time in while, throwing his head back at Louis’ statement. He smiled warmly back at the older boy, happiness coursing through his veins, “I don’t even know how you didn’t get sent to hell in the first place! But seriously Lou, whatever it takes – I just want to spend the rest of eternity with you.”

 

Louis nodded as a small tear escaped the corner of his eye. “Me too.”

 

Their palms and foreheads were pressed against the other’s through the impenetrable barrier, trying to be as close to one another as they both could physically manage.

 

“I love you – so please stick with me through this Hazza…I don’t know what’s going to happen, but hopefully it will work. Please promise me you won’t give up. Please?”

 

“I won’t. And Louis?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I love you too.”


	2. Chapter 2

She gazed solemnly out the window at the rapidly passing English countryside. It was an unusually clear day for mid-October by England’s standards, and the sparse amount of clouds dotting the pale blue sky showed no promise of the regular downpour from the heavens.

 

The little girl felt her spirits lift slightly in response to this observation. Superstitiously enough, she took it as a good omen that something pleasant would come out of her parent’s most recent purchase – a luxurious flat in the exclusive Frien Barnet section of London. The girl had moved more times in her seven years than she could count with her petite fingers due to her parent’s careers. Her father was co-host and judge on the X Factor, and her mother had the stressful job of a world-renowned female surgeon. Although they certainly were not in dire status in terms of money - the little girl received anything her small heart desired with a simple proposal to her parents – the tediousness of moving every half-year was wearing her down to the core. It seemed that just as her tremendous amount of shyness began to ebb away, and she began to grow more relaxed around her acquaintances, she was forced to shove all of her belongings into the dreaded cardboard boxes once more.

 

The girl sighed sullenly as she thought of this, trailing a finger down the side of the window in large loops.

 

“Don’t do that Carmen – you’ll leave smears!” the girl’s mother called out from her stiff upright position near the front seats of the limousine. “And fix your headband; it’s tilted too far over to the left.”

 

Carmen stopped her aimless circles on the glass, her fingers falling on the top of her head. She obediently shifted her floral headband back to a more suitable position in her mother’s standards of perfection. She locked eyes with her mother, her piercing blue orbs meeting the middle-aged woman’s cold green ones in a tired, questioning stare.

 

Her mother gave her a curt nod before returning her attention to the blackberry glued to her manicured hand. It chirped, sending tiny pulses of sound around the sleek black limo’s interior. Carmen ignored the irritating sound without a second thought. The relentless pinging and ringing that erupted from the phone were like the soft hum of a fan in the background to the little girl, due to the fact that her parents always had them turned on. Instead, she focused on the sprawling property emerging in the distance that she would call home in a few brief minutes.

 

Rick, their chauffeur, tapped on the brake pedal lightly and the limousine decreased its speed to an effortlessly smooth halt before the wrought iron gates. He rolled down the tinted window on the driver’s side and stuck out his head covered with his perfectly slicked back hair. He murmured a few short sentences with the gate guard Carmen couldn’t catch and exchanged a small white slip of paper for a handful of keys. The polished gold surface of the metal keys momentarily blinded her, and Carmen hid her eyes with the strands of her thick chocolate-coloured hair.

 

Regaining eyesight a few minutes later, Carmen curiously peeked out between the unruly curls concealing her face to view the massive flat. Its bricks were two shades darker than the golden keys, but still shone in the weak autumn sunlight with a faint glow. Five grand arches peeked out from the array of tall grass and flowers neatly groomed in a precise circle, which the driveway revolved around. Two massive towers shot upwards on the side of the arches, and in the middle of them sat a balcony. To complete it all, a stunning blue dome, from which the flat got its nickname “The Dome” from, poked out from behind the slanted roof visible.

 

Carmen was awestruck by the plentiful amounts of beauty it boasted, but constructed her face into a mask of indifference. She couldn’t reveal her true emotions about the house to her mother. She knew all too well from previous experiences if she asked to remain living in a particular location that she would receive the same condescending answer: “Well Carmen, your Dad and I’s jobs require us to relocate, and it is highly improbable that we will ever not move. It’s for our own safety. You wouldn’t want to put mommy and daddy in danger now do you?”

 

Carmen sighed once more, releasing all the pent-up emotion in a single breath. She had to keep her parents safe.

 

~~~~~

 

Later on in the evening, after Carmen had completed the full three-course meal presented before her and her parents as dinner, she escaped to her new bedroom. The refined elegance of the room was not disregarded by the small girl, whose head was easily swallowed in size when compared to the immense chandelier-type lights hung on either side of the king size bed. But Carmen could only wish for the quaint bunk beds placed in a regular child’s room that she read about in her collection of novels. The coziness they offered was much more comforting than the masses of empty space on her bed that no amount of stuffed animals could fill. No matter what she did – from piling masses of blankets, pillows or beanie babies – the room would never feel truly inviting to her.

 

At precisely 9 o’clock, at her mother’s demand, Carmen turned off the lights crawled into the oversized bed unwillingly. Tears streamed silently down her chubby freckled cheeks in torrents. The vacancy and hollowness that filled her heart frightened her; there was no one to comfort her. Her mother would deem her behaviour as being overdramatic, and her father couldn’t be more frigid towards her, as he had separated himself from Carmen’s life almost entirely. The only time the pair conversed was when Carmen wasn’t doing something right, and she needed to listen to her mother.

 

A sob escaped her, and Carmen quickly covered the thick duvet over her mouth to stifle the sounds of terror bubbling up from her heart and flowing out through her fragile lips. Her curly hair billowed around her in a sea of brown, catching the teardrops as they rained down from her eyes.

 

Carmen was so consumed in her own grief that she didn’t notice the shadowy figure that had silently appeared at the foot of her bed. It peered down at her heaving figure in great concern, stepping forward into the glow of her nightlight. Its distinctively male figure sported a white shirt plastered with light blue stripes that matched his eyes sparkling with worry. His suspenders were attached to red jeans rolled up once to expose his thin, tanned ankles. Thin canvas shoes covered his toes, in the distinctive shape and form of TOMS, which had gone out of fashion decades before.

 

“There, there,” he murmured softly, his tone kind and soothing. He slowly reached out to gingerly touch Carmen’s petite shoulders in a gesture of comfort as his motherly instinct took over, but his hand passed right through her tiny frame.

 

She jerked away in fright from the contact. Electricity from where his hand had gone through her sent dangerous tingles throughout her body. The hairs prickled at the back of her neck as her mind screamed “DANGER! DANGER!” in a frantic mantra. She tried to scream, but the thickness of her throat from crying ceased all noise from escaping.

 

“It’s okay! It’s okay – I’m not going to hurt you! Easy!”

 

Carmen regarded the young man in disbelief, her wary eyes darting from his hand that had passed straight through her torso and then back up to his pleading expression.

 

“It’s okay Carmen,” he soothed, moving his hands in a downward motion.

 

Carmen’s eyes widened even further, and she began to tremble. Her heart was racing frantically, but she cleared her throat nervously, “How…how d-do you k-know my n-name?” she paused to cough, “Who are you? How do you know me? Why are you here? Please…don’t hurt me!”

 

He smiled humorously, revealing a set of pearly white teeth. “Easy on the questions now, I’m guessing you’re quite the curious little one, aren’t you?” He paused to gauge her response, but was only met with the same terrified stare, “I’m sorry, you must find this all terribly frightening Carmen. But I’ll have you know that I will never hurt you. Okay? I am not here to harm you in any way.”

 

Carmen stared back at the man, her blue orbs piercing through his as she took in his statement. A noticeable shudder ran through her body, but a portion of the distrust in her eyes vanished. She gave him a brief nod in understanding.

 

“Good! First things first…as you may have noticed, I am a ghost!” he paused, and then hastily added, “But not to fear. I am only here because I still have unfinished matters down on earth…” A mixture of pain and remorse etched across his tanned features as he spoke, and Carmen was curious as to why. “But all these stories you hear about bad ghosts and such is a bunch of baloney. We’re only here to observe things and report them to heaven, or as in my case, we have business from our previous lives that still needs to be attended to, and we need to find other ghosts to help us to do so. Please don’t be afraid of me. Please. Believe me when I say you can trust me.”

 

She studied the ghost before her. He didn’t look threatening. In fact, he looked like a regular young adult dressed in old clothes, with no transparency or mist surrounding him insinuated in the horror movies she wasn’t supposed to watch. His relaxed, easy demeanor, and open face made it hard to be afraid of him – he looked like a friendly person.

 

“I trust you.”

 

The ghost’s face lit up, his blue orbs sparkling. “Thank you Carmen. You really don’t know how much that means to me. Thank you so much.”

 

Carmen smiled at the obvious relief in his tone, warmth flowing through her at making someone happy. “It’s no problem...” she trailed, looking to the young ghost for confirmation on his name.

 

“Louis,” he said, grinning, “My name is Louis Tomlinson.”


End file.
